We are really pleased to announce that Ensim Unify Enterprise has been chosen by Intel® to provide user provisioning and application management software for the Intel AppUp(sm) Small Business Service - previously known as Hybrid Cloud.

The AppUp Small Business Service product is built atop Windows Server 2008 and Windows Small Business Server 2008, where Ensim Unify provides automated, role-based user provisioning and application management services for Windows Server (Active Directory), SharePoint, and Microsoft Exchange, as well as advanced group management capabilities for both security groups and Exchange distribution lists.

Its great technology and it can be a real life saver for small businesses that want to reap the cost and efficiency benefits of cloud computing but keep the server and data securely on site. The concept is actually pretty simple: you purchase a system and get a locally hosted server and software on a pay-as-you-go (monthly subscription) basis, allowing smaller businesses to pay per user. That way, you only pay for the users you actually have. No more guessing at the capacity you might need in the future and always ending up with either too much or too little.

At the same time, managed service providers (MSP) could potentially offer hundreds of these systems on a very cost effective basis to its smaller customers with the Ensim Unify control panel managing these systems individually and in aggregate. These MSP’s will find the combination of Intel technology with Ensim Unify’s provisioning and management capabilities pre-installed offers significant advantages that reduce overhead, improve ROI, and increase customer retention and satisfaction.

We are pleased to announce that we received a 4.5 out of 5 rating for our Audit Manager product in a recent evaluation performed by Windows IT Pro® magazine. You can learn more about Audit Manager by clicking here - but essentially Audit Manager gives IT administrators an auditing solution specifically designed to work with Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2. The goal is to make it simple to discover, analyze, and report any changes made to the Active Directory.

In the review, Penton Media’s Windows IT Pro editor Eric B. Rux said, “Unify Audit Manager is extremely simple to set up, and the product uses functionality that’s already built into Server 2008. The queries are easy to master, and the information that systems administrators, security analysts, or pesky auditors need is right at your fingertips. And at only $5 a user, it’s affordable for even a small company.” (Click to read the full review). We are, of course, very pleased with the review.

2011 should prove to be an exciting year. Enterprise 3.0 has been released and it offers a host of new features and performance enhancements to give our customers increased flexibility and for managing core IT resources. New and enhanced functionality includes approval workflows, enhanced user naming conventions, support for a variety of new high-availability scenarios, multi-role assignment capabilities, and much more.

Giving organizations the ability to design their own approval workflows has always been important. With 3.0 we added a powerful new framework built on Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF). This gives us the ability to offer a full in-process workflow capability that can be used to configure just about any operation that requires approval before it is executed. We pride ourselves on our ability to automate just about any complex IT task when it comes to provisioning and management, but there are times when someone must approve a particular task and 3.0 provides that flexibility to business process folks in just about every complex scenario you can imagine.

It’s a great opportunity when a company get’s to tout its achievements. This blog post shares it’s enthusiasm for not just one of Ensim products but for both Ensim Unify Service Provider Edition and Ensim Unify Enterprise Edition.

“Internet Telephony is happy to recognize and honor Ensim for their development of IP communications technology. With Ensim Unify Service Provider Edition, Ensim has further proven its commitment to quality and excellence while addressing real needs in the marketplace,” said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. “We look forward to more innovative solutions from them in the future.”

Cloud Computing - sometimes misunderstood, but a topic that has been steadily growing in popularity and interest in the IT industry over the last few years - has the potential to significantly change how IT works by offering ready access to new capabilities, less expensive IT resources and unrivaled flexibility for businesses. We take a look at what we feel is the most probably future of cloud computing…